The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

From an Amazon delivery perspective, the game arrived fine. No issues. From a game review perspective: This was a unique entry into the Zelda franchise. It is akin to the style of Zelda games I like, feeling more like a handheld Gameboy style game rather than a larger Breath of the Wild style production. Graphics: The graphics are colorful and vibrant, but I personally don't care much for the toy-like look of everything. I always called these "Fisher-Price" graphics since everything looks like a toddler's toy. Not a huge deal and the cuteness works well with the game play style. I'd prefer something a bit more mature for future releases. Gameplay: The echoes are an interesting mechanic and the core of the gameplay. Basically you use the environment and enemies to fight against each other. Zelda I'm sure could wield a sword, but with the vast amount of echoes available, there is a lot more creativity than you'd think. There are a lot of echoes. Pretty much every enemy is one. There are a handful used to get around the map and reach higher places. There are unique ways to go about defeating enemies whether you want to brute force it or use a distraction. With the sheer amount, this does eventually pose some annoyances. After a while it gets so damn tedious to scroll through the list of echoes looking for the right one. Especially near the end when you have 120+, it slows down the gameplay a lot. Also (at least for my experience), the vast majority of the echoes are useless. Maybe 25% of them have real consistent usability. The rest are a novelty or might have one situation where it might be kind of useful. Otherwise, they just take up space (I'm looking at you, Sign echo). Same goes for the automatons from Dampe. I didn't use them at all during the game. I got them too late for them to really matter. Plus, they are optional. Not that these are negatives. It gives lots of options for different play styles. The smoothies are an interesting touch, but I hardly ever required the need to use one. The cold resistance was useful as you walk around Hebra Mountain and the sword energy ones. That's about it. Sure, you can make smoothies to replenish hearts, but the beds do that for free. They provide help like glow, wind-up speed, climbing speed, and dive time, but there are accessories that are way better suited to provide those traits. For example, the glow doesn't provide any more light than a fire Zol, so just carry around those. You will never run out of smoothie ingredients. Those are the majority of the rewards you will get in the game. I routinely had 40+ of each with a full smoothie stash. Each smoothie only requires two ingredients. I had a ton of ingredients I had no need for. The attachment mechanic from Tri that can move Zelda along with an object feels like a forced gimmick since it is only useful once you get it to demonstrate it or when they force you to use it. Not once did I use it while exploring the map to reach anywhere. One nice feature is your ability to wander around most of the map before you even get to the main story. You can walk up and around the outside the boundaries of the map. More echoes help with that later in the game. Getting places and solving puzzles is not always a single solution, so there is plenty of creativity involved. Difficulty: The game does have a separate difficulty mode than can be switched on at anytime to make it harder. I just played it on normal and it wasn't an overly difficult game. There are some situations where you can be overwhelmed if you don't plan an attack. Mostly the groups of enemies on the map guarding chests, especially for more powerful and aggressive enemies like the Lizalfos. Most enemies actually do a fair amount of damage in this game. Not just like half a heart. Most do like, 2 or more. But avoiding them isn't hard. I'd give the game an easy to moderate difficulty (say 4 out 10). It's beginner friendly. Controls: The game controls quite well. It is fairly simple and straight forward. Bringing up the menu for echoes and switching through them is quick, but searching through gets tedious after a while. Each button has its own purpose with very little overlap. Verdict: I don't care too much about Zelda games being canon, so I'm not sure if this fits in anywhere in the timeline. It was still a fun adventure and that is what mattered. Not a difficult game, but the fun for me lied in the exploration and clever use of the echoes to solve puzzles and get around. The game is about 15 to 20 hours in length, so you'll be satisfied. Overall, I give it a solid B.